Customer service representatives who seek to solve problems for customers need to understand their

Customer service managers' main responsibility is to support teams and help them succeed. They must invest in their teams both professionally and personally.

Managers should get to know their employees through activities like personality assessments, core value sharing and regular one-on-one discussions. With many positive and genuine touchpoints with teams, managers can understand employees' thought processes, how they communicate and their motivations.

For example, managers can ask about employees' career interests and desired development, which can help the employees feel valued and help with succession planning. Managers can also learn each person's likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses.

Where is the organization currently, and where does it want to go? Customer service representatives must understand these touchpoints, and managers must communicate what they mean for each employee's role.

For example, if the organization has ambitious growth goals, managers should explain to employees the staffing plan to ensure the business has enough support without overtime. Managers should repeat the vision regularly and report progress.

Organizations often change direction significantly, which may create challenges for frontline employees. Managers should efficiently communicate any potential changes in the following ways:

• Acknowledge how the organization changed similarly in the past and why that worked before. Then, pivot to the new changes and the reasons behind them.
• Outline the approach and what's in it for the employees, including rewards for milestones or goals achieved.
• Encourage questions. If the shift is particularly difficult, managers can follow up with anyone who struggles.

Customer service managers should encourage employees to share ideas freely and make them comfortable sharing opposing opinions. Open communication enables managers to use the whole team's ideas to improve performance and prevent mistakes. When an employee comes to a manager with a problem, the manager can ask questions to help employees think critically and independently problem-solve.

In every meeting, customer service managers should have a list of what they must communicate to their teams to maintain consistent messaging across groups. When possible, a single person could communicate to the largest audience possible or create a communication plan for consistency.

To gain trust, managers should be transparent and proactive with sensitive changes that may affect employees. Leadership teams should also act as a united front. As they communicate sensitive topics or changes, managers should ensure they support the changes, with all their questions and concerns answered prior.

Customer service leadership teams should ensure new hire training enables employees to develop new skills and feel confident -- especially in fast-paced environments. Employees should also have mentors within the team to go to with questions. Mentorship helps integrate new team members and provides career development for more experienced representatives.

For existing employees, managers should provide and regularly update easy-to-navigate procedures and job aids. Managers should also offer opportunities to grow and learn to increase engagement and prevent stagnancy.

Customer service teams require regular performance reviews and specific, clear communication on what they do well and what they should do differently. Managers should offer feedback on behaviors within three days, so employees can accurately recall their tone, body language and word choice.

Additionally, managers should discuss overall performance with each employee at least once quarterly. Performance review ratings and feedback should not surprise employees.

In return, customer service managers should accept and actively facilitate peer-to-peer feedback -- which many leadership teams underuse -- from their teams on how to better support them. Managers should take time to teach, develop comfort with and then expect this feedback. A reciprocal environment can create a culture where employees communicate openly and solve conflicts independently.

Leadership teams should define good and exceptional performance for each customer service role and ensure employees understand how to improve. To help their employees, managers must communicate and document expectations and the reasons behind them.

People advancing is the biggest measurement of a manager's success.

If an employee doesn't meet expectations, managers should first verify that they set clear guidelines. They should also ensure that employees complete tasks in a timely and efficient manner, so everyone knows when to expect deliverables. If employees don't meet expectations, managers must hold them accountable.

While no leader wants to lose valuable employees, managers should encourage people to take promotions or new opportunities even if it hurts the team in the short term. People advancing is the biggest measurement of a manager's success.

Additionally, managers shouldn't tolerate or fail to address toxic behaviors within a team -- even from a talented employee. Bad behaviors spread quickly and can bring down entire teams.

Managers must remain reliable to their teams, which requires keeping employees happy. To maintain employee happiness, managers should monitor work-life balance and offer flexibility to prevent burnout. Managers should also shield employees from pressure above and take the heat from unreasonable customers.

Managers should be authentic and vulnerable with their teams. If everyone can own their mistakes and shortcomings, the team's credibility grows, and everyone continuously improves.

Managers should seek first to understand and assume positive intent when faced with a conflict, employee criticism or lackluster performance. They shouldn't jump to conclusions but instead have an open conversation and ask the employee's point of view, which can guide the next steps, ensure fairness and prevent intimidating situations.

Also, managers can use data as a guide. In some situations, they may struggle to assess employees' perceptions, so managers should ask themselves what information they already have or could get to form a clear picture. They should rely on objective information over word of mouth.

The customer service strategy should include the development of a vision and policy. The vision should identify the type of customer service the organization will use, while the core policies direct how the customer service department operates. Get input from several teams and departments to include various perspectives during development. Multiple perspectives also aid with aligning and embedding the vision and policy across the organization, including expectations and execution.

Goals should be reasonable and identified early. Best practices for setting goals include the following:

• Define specific goals by taking the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound) approach, with each goal focused on a single area of the customer's experience.
• Ensure that goals are achievable but still challenging, and identify when they tie back to business objectives.
• Develop a plan, method and frequency to measure goals.

Create a customer journey and service design map to clarify the steps to assist the customer. The customer journey should come from a customer-facing perspective and include customer activities, touchpoints and pain points. The service design map should consist of steps from an organizational perspective, such as aligning customer touchpoints, communication channels and interactions between systems and pain points.

Use the customer journey and service design maps to assess where to improve the experience. This step includes analyzing customer interactions and answering these questions:

• When in the customer journey do they reach out for assistance? Why do they reach out?
• How often do customers contact the organization? What channels do they use?
• What were the pros and cons of the customer's experience? This is a good place to use any gathered customer satisfaction.

Taking action on issues should benefit the customer and the service team alike. Creating an action plan begins with setting strategic objectives and then identifying any outstanding issues. Then, develop a detailed plan that defines the actionable steps, due date and who owns the project. The action plan should also identify what constitutes success and how often to measure analytics. Before any work begins, it's essential to get alignment from any other teams involved.

With goals in place, determine the appropriate metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) to track. The KPIs provide a look into how well the customer service team is doing. Teams should select and follow a few customer service KPIs from primary and secondary sources.

Primary sources

• Customer satisfaction score, which measures the overall customer satisfaction with a product or service; and
• Net promoter score, which provides insight into customer loyalty and the likelihood of a customer recommending the business to someone else.

At the foundation of any successful business is a well-crafted and defined customer service plan.

Secondary sources and contact center metrics

• Response and hold time;
• First contact resolution;
• Average resolution time;
• Number of issues to be tracked and the nature of issues;
• Active and resolved issues; and
• Customer retention rate.

Beyond traditional customer service skills, organizations must identify additional skills their teams need, such as product-related training. This process includes the following steps:

• Evaluate what skills are required to successfully do the job -- in the current and future state vs. skills assessment of the customer service team.
• Identify training and development opportunities based on the gaps between current and future conditions.
• Empower the customer service team to assist customers beyond traditional service parameters and without using canned responses.

Striving for an expanded team can break down operational silos and improve communications and clarity. A customer service toolkit is often used to lay out the approach and clarify operations, including when handoffs happen between groups.

As the product or service evolves, so should the customer service team. The team should innovate based on the changing needs of the customer to meet customer expectations. This process begins by asking questions such as the following:

• What is and what is not working in the service delivery?
• What is impeding or helping customer loyalty?
• Are customer expectations being met at a basic level? How does this compare to that of any competitors?

Customer service teams are at the center of the customer experience and often make or break the perception of an organization and its service or product. As such, creating a robust customer service plan is paramount for long-term success.